Super Bowl ad prices fall; still amount millions

The bread-and-butter slump has prices for Super Bowl bartering time falling for alone the additional time in its history, but it is still the best big-ticket on television.

TNS Media Intelligence said Monday that 30-second commercials during abutting month's Super Bowl on CBS are affairs for amid $2.5 actor and $2.8 million. That's a bead from aftermost year, aback ads averaged $3 actor on NBC — a record, according to TNS.

Some big players like Pepsi and General Motors are blockage on the sidelines. This leaves holes for abate companies like Diamond Foods and Dr Pepper Snapple to use the Super Bowl to get their articles in advanced of 100 actor admirers who are about affirmed to watch their ads.

It's cryptic how abundant acquirement Super Bowl announcement will accomplish for CBS. As of Friday, alone four of the 62 bartering slots remained to be sold. While not acceptance that ad ante accept slipped, CBS said the clip of sales has been bigger than it was for NBC a year ago.

"We accept our appraisement is agnate and accept we are in a bigger sellout position than they were at this time activity into the game," John Bogusz, controlling carnality admiral of sports sales and business for CBS Television, said.

CBS won't say what it paid for the rights to the Super Bowl. The three networks that now alternating accustomed the game, CBS, NBC and Fox, get it in a amalgamation forth with the amateur they advertisement through the football season.

NBC Universal has said it expects to lose money televising the Winter Olympics abutting month, mainly from the $820 actor the aggregation paid for the rights to the games. The aggregation has said announcement sales were bendable for abundant of accomplished year, but they accept added as the Olympics draw near.

In bread-and-butter downturns, companies are added acceptable to buy Super Bowl announcement aback they appetite to accomplish an appulse by jumpstarting a cast or introducing themselves, said Tim Calkins, a business assistant at Kellogg School of Management. But it's an big-ticket hypothesis for companies like Pepsi and FedEx that would contrarily use the bold to artlessly admonish bodies they're still out there.

He said it's auspicious best of the slots accept been filled.

"In a way, Super Bowl advertisers are acting like bodies are acting in the economy, which is they'll buy alone if there's a deal," he said. "If the amount is right, bodies will footfall up."

One advertiser absorbed in for the aboriginal time was vacation-rental Web armpit HomeAway.

"We absolutely had a anticipation that it wasn't activity to be massively cher against aftermost year. We had a anticipation there'd be some jerk room," said CEO Brian Sharples, whose aggregation will acquaint during the third division of the Feb. 7 game.

The 5-year-old aggregation is spending "many millions" to bang off a yearlong campaign. Its bartering brings aback Chevy Chase and Beverly D'Angelo in their roles as the quirky, traveling Griswold ancestors from the cine "National Lampoon's Vacation." HomeAway paid an bearding sum for the rights to the cine from Warner Brothers and spent about $1 actor to advancement its technology to handle what may be one actor hits on Homeaway.com afterwards the ad airs.

About 20 to 25 percent of anniversary year's Super Bowl advertisers are new, according to TNS. The boilerplate administration for advertisers is three to four years afore bottomward out.

Some return, like Diamond Foods, which aftermost advertised in the Super Bowl in 2007. It's advancing aback this year with one bartering featuring Emerald Nuts and Pop Secret, a cast it bought from General Mills Inc. in 2008.

Big money is at stake. From 1990 through aftermost year, the Super Bowl bold has generated $2.17 billion of arrangement sales including 1,400 commercials from 210 advertisers, TNS said.

The 2009 Super Bowl brought in $213 actor in announcement acquirement — aloof for ads airing during the game, not pregame or column game. That was a 14 percent access from the antecedent year's $186.3 million, aback the boilerplate 30-second aperture amount $2.7 million.

The alone added year that prices beneath was from 2006 to 2007, aback 30-second slots alone from $2.5 actor to aloof beneath $2.4 million, TNS said. Prices aboriginal beyond the million-dollar beginning in 1995, and again $2 actor aloof bristles years later.

For the aboriginal time in 23 years, PepsiCo Inc. won't acquaint its Pepsi cast or any added beverages during the game, alive its ad dollars instead to a new, mostly online business effort. But its bite unit, Frito-Lay, will accept Doritos commercials in the game.

GM alone out aftermost year as it teetered on the bend of a defalcation that came in June. It had advertised in 11 of the antecedent 12 years.

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AP Business Writer Ryan Nakashima contributed to this address from Los Angeles.